Solid state ITO|Au-NPs|TiO2 plasmonic based solar cells

Abstract Plasmonic enhanced solar cells are widely studied due to their increased performance arising from the metallic nanoparticles light absorption and scattering. In contrast, there are only few reports on solar cells which are based solely on the plasmonic metallic layer as the absorber. These cells are operating by hot electron injection in a Schottky barrier formed between the metallic nanoparticles and a semiconductor. In this work, we present photovoltaic cells which are based on an ultra-thin tunable Au layer as the only light absorbing material. These cells are in the solid state configuration composed of ITO|Au NP's|TiO2. High throughput methods are used in order to optimize the performance, which reaches 1 mA cm−2 of current, and a voltage of 100 mV under one sun illumination. The incident photon to electron conversion efficiency is 5.84% at 700 nm, the highest reported for a solid-state device so far. These cells are the first step towards a plasmonic based tandem cell.